Pine Bluff, AR: Pine Bluff man charged with capital murder in girlfriend’s shooting death

Posted on 14 May 2010
By Ray King

PINE BLUFF — A Pine Bluff man faces a capital murder charge in the shooting death of his girlfriend.
Prosecutor Steve Dalrymple charged Curtis C. Hampton III, 45, in the March 6 death of Lashonda Price, 29.
Price was shot while sitting in a car at the Speedway at 101 N. Walnut St. and died while in surgery at Jefferson Regional Medical Center.
During a probable cause hearing for Hampton on March 8, Detective Barry Saffold told Deputy Prosecutor Jill Reed he was on his way to the shooting after being contacted by police dispatchers when he was told that a retired Arkansas State Trooper was following a suspect vehicle, reporting its location and license plate number.
That license plate returned to Hampton’s residence in the 4000 block of West 17th Avenue.
Saffold said Sgt. Rowland Dorman went to the house, arrested Hampton, and located a gun in the vehicle.
At the scene of the shooting, Saffold said he found Price’s vehicle on the parking lot with “blood on the seat and two bullet holes in the seat.”
“I talked with a clerk at the store and he said that a lady ran into the store and collapsed,” Saffold said.
The retired trooper, Steve King, told Saffold he heard the shots, turned around to try and locate the source, and saw only Hampton and Price’s vehicles on the store’s parking lot.
Saffold said he had talked to relatives of Price who told him that she was “supposed to meet Hampton to pick up their child.”
The relatives said Hampton and Price were “boyfriend and girlfriend and he was the father of a 16-month old child.”
Medical personnel at the hospital reported that Price had been shot four times.
In addition to the murder charge, Hampton, who is currently on probation stemming from a 2005 incident that involved him shooting another girlfriend in the leg, was charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm because of that conviction.
Prosecutors have also filed motions seeking to revoke that probation.
Hampton will be held without bond, and the case was assigned to 5th Division Circuit Judge Jodi Dennis.